Many by now must be
dead the taxi drivers
who sat up before me
twenty even thirty
could it be forty years
ago when no matter
where that time I had gone
if the day was over
and the lights had come on

by the time I could see
the Magellanic Clouds
rise from the black river
and the white circuitry
that ordered us over
the bridge into the crowds
and cliffs of the city
familiar as ever
my life unknown to me

I was beholding it
across another time
each dark facade I thought
looked as it had before
the shining was the same
coming from lives unknown
in other worlds those white
windows burning so far
from the birth of the light